Banking hours in Lockdown

brute03

Hi, 
So, I work for a leisure centre and although we are in lockdown we've been asked to still attend site to work. We are currently working a rota where we can not fulfill all of our contracted hours. Now, because we are not fulfilling our hours they are asking for us to bank the remaining hours we've not worked and to repay them back when he hopefully exit lockdown. Are they allowed to make us banks hours and also, should we even be at site working? Jobs include answering any incoming calls to the centre and monitoring social media. Nothing essential.

Many Thanks

Lomast

Would you prefer to be layed off or put on short hours?
 You will need to check your contract as to weather they can force you to bank hours but if you refuse you may end up without a job

TELLIT01

Lomast said:

Would you prefer to be layed off or put on short hours?
 You will need to check your contract as to weather they can force you to bank hours but if you refuse you may end up without a job

They effectively are already on short hours.  They are only going to be paid once so it makes little difference whether they have their hours cut now, and are paid only for hours worked, or if they have to work (for example) 40 hours per week at a later date and only be paid for 30 due to the 'banked' hours.

Personally I would much rather know how much I am going to earn each week, both now and in the future.  Therefore I would rather have hours cut now, unless I planned to leave when full hours are reinstated.  In that situation, getting full pay now would be preferrable.

Brynsam

brute03 said:

Are they allowed to make us banks hours and also, should we even be at site working? Jobs include answering any incoming calls to the centre and monitoring social media. Nothing essential.

The former depends on your contract.

The latter...why on earth can't the phone lines be diverted and social media be monitored from home? Have your employers really not watched the desperate appeals from medical staff for people to heed how bad things are and to STAY AT HOME?

ACG

Asking or telling you? 
I think a lot depends on your contract but the other issue is how many hours are you going to be banking? Those hours could jump up very quickly and if they do eventually make you redundant or you leave, you could fine you owe them a 100+ hours between now and march and end up indebted to them for a very long time. 

Apintplease

If your work can not be done from home then you can work in the work place as long as there has been a risk assessment done and everything possible has been done to make sure you feel safe working there

However I would say that if those are the only tasks you are being asked to do, you have a good argument for working from home and if your boss doesn't agree, a phone call to the HSE should work

Now its up to you if you want to bank the hours or be paid for what you are working. At the moment where I work, some depts work is so little they can be finished in two hours. They then have the choice, help elsewhere or use their holidays or bank the hours ( other depts are snowed under so there is plenty of work if you dont mind working where you dont usually work and getting the crud jobs )

Fighter1986

Brynsam said:

brute03 said:

Are they allowed to make us banks hours and also, should we even be at site working? Jobs include answering any incoming calls to the centre and monitoring social media. Nothing essential.

The former depends on your contract.

The latter...why on earth can't the phone lines be diverted and social media be monitored from home? Have your employers really not watched the desperate appeals from medical staff for people to heed how bad things are and to STAY AT HOME?

This.

A thousand times, this.

What on earth do they think they're playing at asking people to come in to work just to pick up the phone and monitor social media? Homes have had phone lines for over a hundred years don't you know. 

If they're too stupid to work out how to divert a phone number, that's their problem to deal with. It is not an excuse for endangering the workforce, local community, and nation.

They aught to be confronted about this. 

With regards banked hours, if they are paying you for more hours than you are working, that's very generous. If I were in your position I would be inclined to to refuse the additional pay as I wouldn't want to be in a debt situation.

Then again, if I were their employee I'd be implementing a system of homeworking for them, configuring some divert and VOIP / SIP system for employees to use at home for work calls. Set up a VPN gateway and remote desktop access. All that good stuff. 

... If social media is so important to them... Why not have staff run live streams of home workouts, and start interactive sessions with clients online?

Creative workouts using items commonly available at home. Reports on where is good to go for your daily exercise in the local area. 

Do some real community work. Spread some positiviy about the limited resources we have available to us at this juncture. 

I've been doing that round here and I don't even get paid for it. It's just a nice thing to do.